She realised that Neil was speaking to her. She smiled distantly at him.
‘My daughter died last year,’ he said, placing his hands flat on the table in front of him.
‘I’m so sorry, that’s terrible,’ Abby said. She looked at his downcast eyes. ‘How did she die?’
‘She’d been ill for a long time. It was only obvious right at the very end that it was anorexia. That it was killing her.’
‘Oh, God,’ said Abby, leaning towards him.
‘You don’t expect these things, do you? Not if you’re a normal happy family. You don’t look out for them. I just thought she was thin. I keep turning over her life in my mind, looking for clues. We gave her everything: holidays, a fantastic education, a bloody pony. And her brother — completely normal. Although heartbroken about his sister, of course.’
‘Of course, I can imagine.’
‘A chap at work put me in touch with David. I suppose everyone thought that I’d gotten over it too easily. I was back on the trading floor two weeks later. It did me good to lose myself in my work like that. But quite a few of my colleagues have been to the Course over the years. And to be with young people like you, talking about very serious subjects — it’s wonderful. A bit like going back to university.’
Abby reached over and laid her hands on his, gently collecting his fingers in her own. They sat in silence for a while and then she lowered her hands back into her lap.
*
Marcus was sitting at the other end of the table talking to the twins. He had a meeting at eight o’clock the next morning with one of the senior partners. Initially, he had told himself that he would have one drink and then take Abby — who was looking tired and ill — home to bed. But Mouse’s manic conversation, and the promise of another drink, and another chaser, had kept him at the table. He had edged himself away from Abby, whose disapproving glances had only a very minor effect when he was feeling like this. He tried not to look at her and concentrated instead on the twins, whom he couldn’t tell apart, and who were talking so quickly that he only had a vague sense of what they were saying, and so instead looked into their long-lashed eyes.
*
Lee stood outside with the tall, dark-haired young man from her group. His name was Philip. He still wore his leather jacket buttoned up to the throat, even though the night was mild. They smoked in the darkness, and Lee felt tired, but peaceful. She peered inside the cars that passed down the King’s Road, saw young people heading out for the evening, tired City workers coming home, old ladies perched over their steering wheels straining their eyes into the shimmering street lights.
‘I really don’t know why I’m here,’ Philip said.
‘What? Here with me?’
‘No, at the Course. It’s not like it’ll do any good.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I thought this might be a way of making myself believe, of convincing myself that it all means something. I can see it won’t do any good. You’re all lovely people, but I don’t think I’ll be coming back next week.’ He was drinking vodka and tonic. He drained his glass and laid it gently on the window ledge. Lee turned to face him, taking his elbow firmly in her hand.
‘Give it time,’ she said, her voice suddenly sharp. ‘You’ve only been to one session.’ Her voice softened and she loosened her grip from his elbow, letting her fingers trail down his arm to take his hand. ‘You’d be surprised how it works on you. I’ve seen people who swore they were atheists at the first session speaking in tongues by the time the Retreat comes around.’
‘Oh, no, I couldn’t do that.’
‘That’s what they said, too.’
Philip smiled shyly at her.
‘I was a choirboy when I was a kid. I used to go to these wonderful cathedrals and sing. It was awesome to hear your voice rising to fill all that space. But I got so bored during the services. I couldn’t really follow the words, or at least I didn’t see how they were relevant to me. Whenever I’ve been back to church since, I still get that feeling. As if the priest is speaking a language that I don’t understand, as if the service is designed to bore you into submission.’
Lee dropped his hand and lowered her eyebrows, her cigarette held between her fingers like a baton conducting her words.
‘We’re not supposed to listen to it all. Remember it was once in Latin, all of the service sung in a language that much of the congregation wouldn’t have understood. I use it as a time to relax, to still my mind, focus on my breathing. Don’t think that you can reduce it to something easily comprehensible. The beauty of the service lies in its mysteriousness.’
Lee’s cigarette had burned down and she turned to go back inside. Philip reached out to stop her.
‘And the stuff you hear? The stuff about sex? How we’ll all go to hell if we fuck before marriage? That’s not part of the Course really, is it?’
She looked up at him, a cool indifferent smile on her lips.
‘We have to take the Bible as the basis of what we believe. It’s what the Course is founded upon. And it says sex should only be between people who are married. That homosexuality is evil. So yes, it is part of the Course. It has to be. But I think, more than anything, the Course teaches that whatever you do, you’re not beyond hope.’
She reached up, placed a kiss on his pale cheek, and then walked back inside.
*
Mouse sat talking to the Japanese girl, whose name was Maki. He laid his hand heavily on hers whenever he wished to emphasise a point.
‘And the wonderful thing about his work is that it is so bloody honest. You sit there reading him and you think. . you just think Christ this is brilliant, you know?’ He had forgotten which author they were discussing. ‘So, do you live in England? Are you over studying?’
‘Actually I work for a fashion designer on Bond Street.’ She had a slight American accent.
‘Oh, what’s that like?’
‘Shallow, depressing. It’s why I came to the Course. I heard about it from a girl at work. She’s an ex-model who now helps design the swimwear collection.’
‘Oh, yes, Pippa Walsh.’
‘That’s right. Anyway I told her I was feeling lost in London, lonely and so on, and she told me about the Course. I’m not really any religion, you see. My parents were nominally Shinto, but they got married in a Christian ceremony and when my dad died he was buried by Buddhist monks. I like the ritual of Christianity. I like the hymns.’
Mouse went to the bar to get another drink. He was looking forward to going to work the next day. He had taken the job at the library to be close to Lee, but, over time, had found himself warming to a life caught somewhere between student and academic. He had wanted to join Lee on the MA, but couldn’t afford the fees and so instead applied for a position as assistant librarian in the art deco monolith of Senate House. He saw Lee most days: she chose to study in the Special Collections Reading Room where he worked. They had lunch together. Lee regarded him as a talisman, a charm that had helped her to a distinction in the MA and would now see her through her PhD. Mouse was happy. He was able to spend much of the day fetching Lee books, watching the sun move across her or the way she frowned and sucked her pencil as she read.
On the days that Lee stayed at home, or when she had to walk to Gordon Square for lectures, Mouse would climb up to the library’s upper floors, where readers were forbidden to enter and the hundreds of rooms were used to store books. He walked along long corridors of identical wooden doors, negotiating dog-legs and corners that seemed to defy the logic of the building’s external architecture. There were certain spots that drew him to them — his favourite was the hall on the fourteenth floor that reached up to the lofty ceiling three floors above and was entirely empty. The wind always moaned there, no matter what the weather at ground level. Otherwise it was a room of absolute stillness.